Today I received a pair of ERR speakers from Bob, without grilles. Man, they were well packed.

I know this pair has been pretty well broken in and when set up I recognized the bright and spacious sound of the RL2s as a main component to these speakers.

I fiddled with a capacitor, changed resistors and I have to say. . . right now if you told me "Lon, you can only have one pair of speakers or I'll shoot this dog, choose!". .. my immediate choice would be my beloved IT Radial speakers (which are very close to if not the same as the Turning Point Audio HR-1 speakers). I can't tell you right now if that is because I'm so very familiar with those beloved speakers right now, or if they are clearly that much more favored by my ears!

The ERRs definitely have that Radial room-filling sound to more of an extent than the IT Radials, which have a bit more of a conventional sound as the excellent front firing driver contributes a lot to the sound. The IT Radials have a better tonal balance right now for me and my room. The ERRs have a less specific imaging (to be expected) and a brighter tonal balance (I also sort of expected that.) There's less bass at the moment.

I've just begun to get to know them though, and my experience with other Radial speakers make me think I'll find them improved with the grilles in place, so hopefully those will come soon.

"IT"s all in a name, nothing more...."IT" stands for Isotropic, but thinking someone would have to look it up to see what it means (I did) I thought it would be best to change the name to HR-1, which "HR" stands for Hybrid Radial. Yours are the same as the HR-1's

For me, "IT" meant just that. This is "IT"! Just what I have been wanting in from a speaker. As you know its hard to beat the omni effect of the radial type speaker.

Your ERR radial driver is brand new, 20 hrs on it at best as well as any crossover parts. The tweeter on the other hand is well broken in. So you do have some break in time ahead of you.

Your grills on the other hand were over a year old and smelled like Bob's house, thus the reason I didn't ship them. The lady that sews them is working on them now. I just sent her 6 yards of cloth and she has used that all up and is waiting on more.

Pale Rider,

I don't think there is a better, more integrated surround speaker, than ERR's . When I lived in the Phoenix area, I was around a lot of "High End" home theater rooms on a daily basis. We tried a set of RL-1.5 as LRC and rears, and to see the guys in the showroom with there chins on the floor was a site to see. Even with the new room correction software, which I'm told you could lay on the floor in the back corner of the room and hear the same thing as if you were in the sweet spot. It doesn't come close IMHO.

Ah, thanks for the clarification Bob. It did strike me this morning that maybe the woofers weren't broken in as I heard the sound shift a little bit. That may also explain why the bass didn't seem quite there. . . .

These are really attractive and well made speakers. They seem about 200 percent more heavy duty and serious than my RL2s. The Tweeter suspended on its arc seems more effective than the RL2 arrangement as well. As soon as I turned the system on this morning and put some Dave Brubeck in I heard that deep and resonant sound that the RL2s do so well. There is an improved sound scape as well, and I think if the bass fleshes out a bit more it will be a decided improvement on the bass from the RL2s.

The IT/HR-1 design is hard to beat and these speakers I don't think will ever diminish their status in my personal speaker hierarchy. The hardest thing to get right in my room is bass, I'm always diminishing treble to get a warmer balance, and the IT/HR-1 with the Torii Mk III has the best bass I've ever lived with. These ERRs already have a hint that they're going to be just fine in that regard.

I got used to that special sound that the IT/HR-1 have with it's additional driver and its more "encapsulated" radial set up. Pin-point crystal clear imaging and that "dialed in" feeling along with the spacious radial sound. I miss it a bit already! Still, this morning the ERRs have been drawing me in. Still not that many hours on them, so I expect to find them improving hour by hour.

One thing I can say is that they really sound good with my dvr as the source. That's my weakest source as far as fidelity and the IT/HR-1 shows me that with a little tapping of the foot as if to say "well, when are you going to do something about that?" The ERRs are adding a bit more forgiving depth and makes me just relax into that sound a bit more. That's a neat trick!

Lon, great info, much appreciated. In a way, I am lucky that I am moving back to a high fidelity loudspeaker system, after being away from such for years. All my hi-fi is headphone based, and so I have a very different point of reference. My last hi-fi speaker rig was almost two decades ago. I think my focus will be on detail, and micro-detail. In that regard, the ERRs will be up against tough standards in my Jerry Harvey JH-13 Pro IEMs, and my Audez'e LCD-2 cans running on the Taboo. Detail out of the IEMs is extraordinary, and while soundstage is good, it takes another step up on the Taboo running in Lucid Mode. Soundstage and imaging on headphones is a bit artificial, but Lucid Mode will provide an interesting comparator to the ERRs. In my room, without comparing to headphones, the ERRs are just going to be an entirely new plane in my listening that I haven't lived with in almost 20 years.

Well. .. the ERRs are going to be even more than that. They are not your ordinary high end speaker. Though you'll be able to focus on detail, in two channel you'll be drawn into the presentation of the sound, the ERR will present sound in ways that you are not likely t have thought of or heard.

And in a surround system. Wow. I can imagine that it is as jaw-dropping as Bob says it is. I can imagine it presenting sound like the ripples in a pond when a pebble falls in the center. It's going to really be something. It may take you away form detail and into . . .experience.

Your grills on the other hand were over a year old and smelled like Bob's house, thus the reason I didn't ship them. The lady that sews them is working on them now. I just sent her 6 yards of cloth and she has used that all up and is waiting on more.

Difficult to imagine a more intimate, craft-oriented product development & delivery process.

Anyway, Lon did you say what surface the speakers are on? Carpet? Hardwood? Have you spiked them? I seem to recall reading they were built for spikes; is that correct? Mine will be going on hardwood, so am contemplating what eventually to put under them, if anything.

Mine are on short carpet.I belive that there are threaded holes at the corners of each speaker for spikes (none came with the speaker). I had experimented with various spikes and footers on the IT Radial/HR-1 and actually found them best sounding just sitting flat on the floor once they were broken in; that was the perfect tweeter height for my sitting position. These ERRs have the tweeter seemingly a little lower than the other speakers, and as the woofers aren't quite loosened up, and the tonal balance is a bit thin, right now rather than sitting on the floor, and rather than spikes I have them sitting on the "balls" that go into Herbie Audio Lab IsoCups, at the moment the two front balls are the Gabon ebony ones, and the two back are the moss green in the back (extra balls on hand that I had from previous purchases; I didn't have eight balls of one kind on hand). The balls stay in place tucked into the threaded holes on the bottom for spikes. I don't really know if they do any isolating good, but they do bring the tweeter up a bit to more of a position that I'm used to for evaluating purposes.

Stonedeaf here uses the Herbie's Audio Lab "Gliders" on the bottom of the speakers. I used those for quite some time but was surprised to find that they added a sharpness to the sound that I didn't prefer compared to the speakers sitting directly on the floor alone; I moved the gliders to the feet of the redwood stand I use for my TV which also houses my DVR and ZDAC-1 and CSP2 on maple platforms. The Gliders work very well for that purpose, I also put them under the legs of the wooden former acquarium stand I have the components in my bedroom situatied on.

I'd recommend listening for some time with the speakers flat on the floor, that may well be the ticket, I'm definitely going to try that when the ERRs are broken in, and when they're in their home in my bedroom system, or their most-likely home.

I've been playing with speaker placement today. I had been keeping the ERRs in about the same areas of floor space that I had been using for the IT Radials/HR-1. I moved outside of that today and moved the speakers further back (and my listening seats further forward) than I'd been using before and that helped the tonal balance a bit.

It's still changing. I can say one thing though: I had been very happy with my RL2s, and when these ERRs were announced and first available I had the suspicion that these were an improved design. Well, that suspicion is borne out. I haven't yet gotten the RL2s into the system for a direct comparison, but I feel that I'm already getting a certain type of bass response and a depth to the sound that the RL2 design hadn't delivered. . . .